Shann Ray Ferch is a Professor of Leadership Studies in the Doctoral Program in Leadership Studies at Gonzaga University (www.gonzaga.edu/doctoral), a program that employs Robert Greenleaf’s (1979/2002) servant-leadership as one of its central leadership theories. Dr. Ferch has served as a research psychologist with the Centers for Disease Control, United States Government, and is a systems psychologist in private practice. His work regarding leadership and the human will to forgive and reconcile has appeared in scientific journals internationally. He is a lead consultant for Leadership Spirit International and a member of the Greenleaf Center for Servant-leadership, Greenleaf Scholars Board.

The editor of The International Journal of Servant-leadership(www.gonzaga.edu/servantleadership), Dr. Ferch in collaboration with senior advisory editor Larry Spears, President Emeritus and Research Fellow of the Greenleaf Center, publishes essays, science, poetry, and scholarship dedicated to the wisdom, health, autonomy and freedom of others. The advisory board for the journal includes Margaret Wheatley, Peter Senge, Stephen Covey, Dana Zohar, Ron Heifitz, and David Cooperrider.

Dr. Ferch grew up in Alaska and Montana, and lived on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in southeast Montana. From this he gained the much-needed perspective of living as a minority in a Cheyenne culture that faces societal pressures with courage and dignity. Basketball and the inherent nuances of leadership in environments of intensity, rising from the basketball experience, became a significant life passion. He played college basketball at Pepperdine University and professional basketball in Germany. He also attained a BA in Organizational Communications and an MA in Clinical Psychology from Pepperdine. In his doctoral work at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, the focus of his research was touch, forgiveness, and reconciliation among people who have suffered a breach in beloved relationship. He attributes his own love for people, landscape, and the divine possibility of the human heart to his father, Tom, and his mother, Sandy. Of his wife Jennifer he says she “wears the garment of praise instead of the spirit of despair,” and of his three daughters, he says "they are gifts of life and love.”

Correspondence should be sent to Shann R. Ferch, Ph. D., School of Professional Studies, Doctoral Program in Leadership Studies, Gonzaga University, Spokane, WA, 99258-0025; e-mail: ferch@gonzaga.edu.

Lived and worked in Germany, and in Canada. Over the past twenty years, travelled for leadership, professional, personal, athletics, community, research or theology-related purposes to the Czech Republic, South Africa, St. Petersburg (when it was Leningrad) U.S.S.R., Finland, Sweden, Denmark, France, Hungary, Great Britain, Ireland, Mexico, and the Philippines.